Discount – Save 5% on all exterior and interior paint services!

Dollar Discount – Save hundreds on your next paint job!

Green Story

In an industry where going chemical-free seems like a contradiction in terms, Portsmouth’s Minute Men Painters has decided to paint with an entirely different brush. For owner Sean Sturk, the decision to incorporate and even emphasize low toxin or toxic-free paints in all of their interior projects was one made initially based on simple health concerns. “We literally felt the effects of these [toxic] products,” said Sturk. “Jeff, a co-worker of mine, had no sense of smell and we know that this is a result of years of working with toxic fumes. We grew the company to take the burden off of ourselves physically but now we have these other options for our employees. As a company we made a conscious decision to decrease the toxicity of our products and learn as much as we could about them.”

Whereas most painting companies use harsh VOC (volatile organic compound) paints, Minute Men has recently transitioned to offering a wide range of low VOC and VOC-free paints, produced by New Jersey-based Benjamin Moore Co. Not only does Minute Men offer these products, but if a customer doesn’t specify, the company uses no or low-VOC paint by default! And as far as cost is concerned, there literally is no difference; only one of the varieties – the “Aura” line – is more expensive than its chemical-heavy counterpart, and this is because Aura paints don’t require an initial priming job, which, Sturk points out, the customer would have to pay for anyway. The paints used by Minute Men are even cheaper when you take into consideration other factors, including labor costs for cleaning areas painted with standard paints (chemical-heavy paints take much longer to dry), as well as masks and air filter required by the crew to apply the paint – items which aren’t necessary when using VOC-free paints...